


pro patria mori

by Falcine



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Adam's a mechanic, All's fair in love and war, Blue's a cryptographer, F/M, M/M, Noah's a civilian, WWI AU, but Ronan is simultaneously the best and worst fighter pilot in the entire world, everyone's a fighter pilot, okay not everyone, there will be dogfights
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-11
Updated: 2016-05-18
Packaged: 2018-06-07 17:40:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6817540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Falcine/pseuds/Falcine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is 1917 and for America, the beginning of the Great War.</p>
<p>When Gansey decided to enlist, he didn't expect the rest of his friends would follow. But the rest of it—the downed planes and the mysterious codes hinting at an even more mysterious enemy pilot named the Raven King—was somehow made less formidable with them by his side.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Beginnings and Endings

**Author's Note:**

> Uhm yeah so my brain loves AUs so have a WWI AU

_Helen—_

I know you’re mad at me, but I also know you’re too sensible to throw this out. To be honest I’m not sure what I’m even writing you about. I don’t expect you to understand. That’s alright—I’m not sure I understand myself, some days.

Tell mom and dad not to worry about me. They’ve got themselves and you to think about. I’ll write as often as I can. I know you still want me to. I know you’re only mad at me because you love me—it’s what I would’ve done in your place, probably.

I just had to do this. This is right. I can’t in good conscience turn my back and walk out of this war anymore. It used to be just a thought in the back of my mind when none of us thought it would get this bad but I thought it once and I couldn’t rid myself of it since. What am I supposed to do with my life, if not make a difference if I can? I don’t think I’d be able to live with myself if I run away now.

Tomorrow, we get to the training grounds, and I have to admit that part of me is frightfully nervous. It all seems to be happening so fast even if it’s been two months.

I’ll write more once I’ve finally gotten there, just so there’s the possibility of writing about something interesting—it seems strangely disingenuous to tell you about the right decision and making a difference when all I’ve been doing is sit in class and take notes. But tomorrow, I’ll finally know what it’s like to fly a plane, instead of look at diagrams and read manuals for the controls.

Adam says hello, by the way. Ronan says something quite rude that I won’t repeat here, but suffice to say he’s thinking of you. Pass our regards onto Noah, won’t you?

I promise I won’t stop writing you, and you know I’m nothing if not a man of his word. Tell mom and dad I’ve said hello, and that I’m okay, that I love them, that I’m not coming home, not yet.

With all my love,   
_Dick_

 

* * *

 

Gansey stepped out into the airfield before any of the others did. He’d only walked a little faster, a little more of a spring in his step, a bit more eager anticipation in his stride. The wind pulled at his hair, tousling it into something less than perfect. Gansey grinned at the blue, blue sky and eyed the glint of metal that were the planes, sitting in the middle of the clearing like noble steeds.

Sergeant Ross stepped up behind him, and Gansey turned with a half sheepish smile on his lips.

“Gansey.” That private thrill of being just Gansey, not Dick Gansey III, where he was given the chance of a firm handshake and a first impression, same as anyone else. Gansey, that was all he was here.

“Sir.”

“Get back in with the others, Gansey.”

“Yes, sir.” Gansey bit back his smile.

Just before he turned away from the planes, Ross clasped a hand on his shoulder.

“Sir?”

“There’s a plane sitting out there with your name on it so long as you don’t screw these next few weeks up, son,” Ross said gruffly. There was a rough concession in his tone, as if Gansey had somehow won his respect already, rookie he may be.

That was privately thrilling, too, to be worth something that was not his name or his father’s name or his wallet. Gansey didn’t hold back the smile this time. “Thank you, sir.”

Ross patted his shoulder one last time, then sent him on his way.

When Ronan nudged him hard in the shoulder as Gansey fell back in with the rest of the group, he ignored it. He stood up, straight, shoulders squared and tried to pay attention, but the wind and the sky and the shining metal was already calling to him.

Gansey saluted Ross when he marched past, directed some part of his brain to listening to the preliminary lesson to prevent himself a premature and fiery death, but his mind was already overseas and in the air.

_Excelsior,_ he thought, the ache of needing to do something more with his life flaring up. _Higher and still higher._

 

* * *

 

The photo in the frame is old and the worn creases are almost entirely white, now, scoring lines across the image.

Adam’s eyes tightened. He looked out at the waning light and listens to the clattering in the kitchen and his fingers tightened, too, around the wooden frame.

The photo felt ancient, the frame of some indeterminate age, but the moment it captures is eternal.

Gansey smiles, eyes cast off to some distant, far-away place that none of them had ever been able to discern. He holds his helmet in his hands, frozen in a moment just before putting it on, and his hair is still tossed everywhere by the wind.

The Pig stands tall next to him. Gansey has one hand on the wing.

He looks carelessly, effortlessly handsome, as always. He looks noble and wanting and like he represented what Blue always meant when she said, _something more._

Above all else, Gansey looks happy.

Adam pressed his fingers up against the glass, wondering how long it had really been since the war, wondered if Gansey was happy now, wherever he was. He had always been the best of them, Ronan used to say, mostly sarcastically but Adam thought he understood the underlying meaning.

They had been nothing without him, but, somehow, even after he was gone they’d stitched what was left of themselves into some semblance of _Something More._

With a long sigh, Adam put the framed photo on the mantel, face down, and got up to call Blue.

 

* * *

 

“I’m coming with you,” Adam said, as soon as Gansey told them he was going to enlist.

Gansey looked up, startled, but Adam felt the decision already solidifying in his mind. Truthfully, he’d been turning the idea over in his head since they’d declared war, thinking about oceans of distance and a steady wage. He told them as much, clipping his words so it sounded like a rational decision.

Then, “Me too,” Ronan said, somehow still grinning.

“I need you both to understand the consequences of any decisions you make,” Gansey said, wringing his hands as if the two of them wouldn’t have thrown their hats in as soon as he’d said anything. As if it wasn’t as stupid a decision coming from him. His brows were furrowed, worry knitting them close together. “We could die.”

“I could die right here at home,” Adan said, the words tumbling out somehow despite his usual tight control. There was just something about the unflinching earnestness that Gansey carried with him that made Adam want to be honest, too.

He kept going before he could stop himself. “If I die at home I die a coward. If I die at war I die a hero.” The truth of it stretched like a strange, poignant web between the three of them.

“Adam—” Gansey started.

“I’m coming with you.”

Gansey swallowed. Nodded.

Ronan began to laugh. When Adam and Gansey looked at him strangely, he quieted but the sharp grin remained.

“They say it’s like hell over there,” he said, almost conspiratorily. Then, he slung his arms over their shoulders, already looking like he was bred for war. “This is the best decision you’ve ever made, Gansey boy.”

Gansey chuckled nervously, his face finally relaxing. “We’ll be brothers in arms, then,” he said, somehow sounding considerably less stupid than he should’ve. “It’ll finally be official.”

“You better not get yourself killed, Lynch,” Adam said.

“Like I’d do something as shitty as dying,” Ronan said, scoffing.

And Gansey grinned, and then, disentangling himself from Ronan’s arms, he held out his hands. “We do this together,” he said.

“Together,” Adam said, and clasped one hand.

Ronan rolled his eyes but still clasped onto his other.

 

* * *

 

It was, all in all, a relatively common story with a relatively common end. The fact that Blue had finally discovered what all her potential was supposed to do meant relatively little in the grand scheme of things. Nothing at all, really, but it meant something to her. (And, she suspected, to Adam and Ronan and Noah. To Gansey.)

The beginning: pilots and war, a downed plane, a mysterious code.

The end: Blue’s kiss would be the death of her true love.


	2. Part I: Para Bellum

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Before war

His parents had often reminded Gansey that he was destined for greatness. Helen had always rolled her eyes, but she understood. To be a Gansey was to be  _ Somebody,  _ and Gansey thought his parents thought he would go on to make a name for himself as a Historian, or else in the business world.

Gansey knew, as soon as they’d sank the Lusitania, that he was destined to fight in the war. 

The three of them soon settled into a routine. Gansey hadn’t always meant to be the leader of the group, but Adam was usually too tired or too sullen or too pragmatic to do much decision making and Ronan was Ronan, and so whenever Sergeant Ross needed any of them to do something it was inevitably Gansey who was called. 

“The two of you are utterly useless,” Gansey complained one day, having spent the entire afternoon mopping the mess hall because he’d gotten roped into Ronan’s ridiculous plan to let some of the farm animals loose.

Adam scoffed, wheeling out from underneath an old ‘14 he’d been tinkering with. It looked like it belonged to a junkyard by now, or else at least like it’d gone through one too many dogfights and had only barely escaped being shot out of the sky. “I’d like to not be associated with the trash, thanks,” he said flippantly. 

Ronan flipped him the bird. 

Gansey watched skeptically as the old fighter plane teetered. Adam made as if to go back under, but Gansey caught him by the arm. “Jesus, what if that thing falls on you?” 

Giving him a flat look, Adam gently pried Gansey’s fingers from his forearm. “I’ll scream if it starts to move,” he said, deadpan, and Gansey watched him disappear again. 

“I don’t understand how you can fearlessly face being crushed by a couple tonnes of steel whenever you try and fix a plane but still refuse to actually fly one,” Gansey said absentmindedly, still keeping an eye on Adam’s long spindly legs.

“I’m pretty sure this is a tonne at most,” Adam answered. 

“You are definitely avoiding the question,” Gansey pointed out. 

For a moment, he could only hear metal clanking, something creaking. Gansey told himself that Adam had it handled, that it would be ridiculous for this plane to fall now of all times anyways. 

“I feel more in control down here,” Adam finally said, pushing himself out. He held a hand out and, surprisingly, Ronan tossed a rag to him without so much as a complaint. 

Straightening, Adam thumped on the side of the plane. “Try it now.” 

Ronan, already dressed in his uniform, already holding the pilot’s helmet, grinned widely and started to push the plane out into the field. “Make yourself useful, Parrish,” he grunted.

Adam didn’t move. Gansey sighed and got up to support the other side of the plane. 

He and Ronan pushed the piece of junk to the rarely used airstrip. Gansey wiped at his brow, setting the thing down heavily. 

“You know that thing is ridiculously outdated, don’t you?” Gansey asked.

Ronan dropped his side as well, coming around the front to flick him in the forehead. “Chill, Dick.” The side he’d been supported sagged in a wholly uninspiring manner. 

Gansey made a face. “I won’t take responsibility if you crash.” 

From behind them, Adam called, “Neither will I!” 

Ignoring them both, Ronan shoved his helmet on and climbed into the cockpit. Gansey barely had time to stumble back before he started the engine. 

The plane roared to life somehow, and Ronan let out a loud whoop. 

Despite his apprehension, Gansey couldn’t hold back the quiet smile or the glee that rose in his stomach at the sight of the plane wobbling in the field, ready to take off. He squinted into the wind, backing up some more just as the propeller started to pick up speed. Gansey wanted to step closer, wanted to stand on the wing himself, look down on the world and see it perfect and whole. 

He turned his back, Ronan’s infectious grin on his face. 

Gansey dropped down beside Adam, leaning against the warehouse wall. They sat together and watched Ronan take off into the sky. 

“Nice job,” Gansey offered. 

Adam dipped his head. 

“I don’t know why he insists on flying those old things.” Gansey tilted his head. “Why do you fix them when he asks?” 

Adam shrugged, rubbed at the grease spot on his face. “It’s like a challenge,” he said, then shook his head. “Well, more like a personal one, but Ronan will try and fly anything and I think you understand trying to mitigate the damage.” 

Gansey laughed a bit. “True.” 

“How do you do it?” Adam suddenly asked.

“What, fly?” 

“Mmhm.” 

He looked up into the sky, Ronan and his plane just a blot of stupid tricks and recklessness in the distance. “I can’t really imagine not doing it.” Gansey held up his hand like he could reach out and pull the plane back if he wanted to. The wind picked up, blowing dust in their faces, but Gansey found he didn’t really mind it. “It’s like when I’m up in the air it’s just me and my job, nothing else.”

Adam made a soft snorting sound. “That’s the most Gansey-like answer you could have given.” 

They leaned back against each other, just watching and waiting for Ronan to come back down, for them to be a unit again. 

“See look,” Adam suddenly said, pointing a finger at the sky. “How else do you get Ronan Lynch to listen to you?” He spread out his hands, speckled with dirt and oil. 

Gansey laughed. “You fix his planes.” 

“Exactly.” 

 

* * *

 

Later, Gansey left for his aerial gunnery test, so Adam and Ronan kicked around by the plane and the semi-abandoned patch of the field alone. Ross showed up, eventually, because there didn’t seem to be a place in the entirety of the airfield Ross wouldn’t inevitably show up at. The setting sun cast a long shadow over the two of them long before the man himself stepped onto the scene. He took one look at Ronan leaning up against his new fixed piece of trash plane and asked, “Who the hell got this up and running again?” 

“Parrish,” Ronan said. “Who else?” 

“Sir,” Adam quickly added, getting to his feet. He shot Ronan a dirty look, but was only met with a scoff and Ronan pushing off the side of the plane with more force than strictly necessary. 

Ross towered over them all and was a commanding officer to boot. Ronan slung his thumbs in the loops of his uniform and stared the Sergeant down. 

“Get back to the barracks, Lynch.” 

Ronan smiled. “Yes,  _ sir, _ ” he spat, more of an insult than anything else. 

He kicked up a cloud of dust as he stomped away, and the fact that Ross didn’t say another word said more about Ronan’s military prowess than all the perfect scores in his records. Adam wiped his hands on his pants awkwardly, wondering if he was about the take the heat for the whole thing instead. 

“You fix that up by yourself?” Ross asked, giving Adam a squinty eyed glare. 

“I—” Adam cleared his throat. “Yessir.”

Ross walked up to the old ‘14, thumping it on the side much like Ronan had. Adam balled his hands into fists so he wouldn’t pick at his shirt again, watching Ross circle around it. It was impossible to read the man’s face from the aviators he wore, but Adam was almost certain that he had fucked up yet again. 

One didn’t go through life without collecting some collateral damage from Ronan Lynch, it seemed. 

He tried to convince himself he regretted it. 

Then, Ross turned back towards him. “Solid work, Parrish.” 

“Sir?” 

Ross shoved his hands into his back pockets. “Honestly I’m surprised you got this piece of shit up and running.” 

“Oh. Sir.” 

“Don’t look so fucking terrified, Parrish.” Ross pushed his sunglasses up. “I want to promote you, not murder you in a ditch somewhere.” Then he pulled a face as if something was terribly funny. “‘Course, the front’s a mess so you might end up dead no matter what.”

_ Oh.  _ “Sir?” 

“Yeah?”

“What about my flight scores?” 

Ross waved a hand. “Son, I don’t give a rat’s ass that your test scores are below average if you can fix a plane like that crap. We’re fighting a war, not grading papers like a fucking private school.” 

Adam found himself grinning. “Of course not, sir,” he said. 

“You’re a real delight next to Lynch, you know that?” 

The grin widened. “Of course, sir.” 

Ross laughed and flipped the sunglasses back down. “Speaking of war it’s time we got you gentlemen out of this shithole and right in the thick of it.” He started towards the barracks, and Adam fell in step behind him, just an arm’s length away like he was supposed to. Ronan probably would’ve refused to budge or else bounded up ahead.

“What do you mean, sir?” 

“There’s a group shipping out next week, headed to Great Britain,” Ross said. “I want you, Lynch, and Gansey overseas.” 

It felt like a rock dropped into his stomach. Adam blanched, somehow never having expected the war to have loomed up this close, the desire for combat sitting like an inert lump of coal in his chest. “Next week?”

“Yep,” Ross said, snapping the word like a rifleshot. “Soon as possible, son. You’re the best mechanic we got here.” 

Adam swallowed the doubt. “Yessir.” 

Ross gave him one last lingering look—undecipherable as always. Adam could only see his own wide eyed face in the shining lens of the aviators. “Get some rest, Parrish,” he finally said. 

Adam watched him go, shadow long over the flat airfield as always. He looked up at the dark barracks, winking lights still flickering in places and blew out a breath. 

The sun was setting in Henrietta field and the sky didn’t so much as grow dark here but feel like it pressed down lower. All of the airfield was nothing but metal and sand—some days Adam thought the wind might erode it all away before the war was even over.  

He could do this. He signed up for this. Adam wasn’t stupid enough to think that he could get away from the actual act of war, the thing that he was being paid for. Great Britain was an entire ocean away—wasn’t that what he wanted? 

Still, the strange white hot flash of fear that laced his mind at the thought of it was persistent. Adam imagined being forced into battle, or else their base under attack. What did a military base even look like? Like this barren airfield? Or would there be something greener in England? Adam imagined all the fighter pilots coming at them, guns blazing, engines roaring. 

They all looked like Ronan, eyes all wild fire, teeth bared, flying towards him with death in the barrel of the plane guns. 

Guns that Adam knew inside out.

He steadied himself on the edge of the barrack, cool metal flat against his palm. Gansey and Ronan weren't to know he was afraid. Adam would stop being afraid before they could pity him. Adam looked out over the field of planes, mentally checking off what he could do to each one to shoot them down. He knew where the struts were weak, where the hull could be pierced, what exact angle to take a propeller down from. German craft were different, but he’d learn. 

Adam blew out another deep breath, closing his eyes. The fear ebbed away, calmed by the steady flow of his thoughts. Break it down, break it to pieces—Adam hated letting fear control him, and he let his steadfast mastery of machinery reassure him. 

The pilots crashed to a fiery death in his mind, but they still wore Ronan’s face. 

This was a different sort of fear, the sort that Adam entertained whenever he thought about his own handiwork failing, about either Ronan or Gansey getting into a plane he’d tried to fix only to crash halfway through.

Adam knew this fear more thoroughly than the other, but the solution was the same. 

He strode into the dark barracks, listing parts of engines in his mind, piecing the old ‘14 back together in his mind like a prayer.  

 

* * *

 

Supposedly, the barracks used by the US Army Air Service at Henrietta Field used to be a factory. The sign out front still said Monmouth Manufacturing in faded lettering. Whatever the factory had produced, however, was lost to the dusted archives of collective memory, because the entirety of the inside had been gutted and rows upon rows of thin metal beds slotted in. 

Adam lay on his side in his row, listening for the sounds of Gansey and Ronan breathing next to him. 

“Hey,” he whispered.

Ronan grunted. Gansey’s eyes opened, blinking owlishly in the darkness. 

Neither of them had been asleep.

“Where were you, asshole?” Ronan mumbled. 

“Outside,” Adam said, didn’t elaborate. 

Gansey shot him a concerned look, but Adam offered a headshake and half a smile and hoped it was enough.   

“Were you waiting for me?” he asked, strangely elated. 

“Of course,” Gansey said. 

“Took you long enough,” Ronan said. 

Adam propped his chin up with his arm, staring out at the two of them. The moonlight started to come in through the high windows of Monmouth, a relic from the factory days, but probably a good idea in a warehouse full of eager pilot cadets. “Ross told me we’re going to Britain.” 

Even in the stillness, Gansey’s grin was devastatingly bright. “I know,” he said, his whispering threatening to turn into his normal voice in his excitement. “He told me after I finished aerial gunnery. I cannot believe this is actually happening.” 

“I can,” Ronan said, his own grin just as bright, though more like licking fire than Gansey’s glowing delight. 

“I’m with Gansey,” Adam whispered.

“Do you think,” Gansey started, “we’ll be there when we win the war?”

Adam raised an eyebrow, then realized they couldn’t see that in the dark. “Awful optimistic, Gansey,” he said quietly. 

The steady breath of the three of them spilled out into the night. 

Then, “The alternative is too terrible to imagine, I suppose,” Gansey said. His eyes were bright but his brows were drawn, looking less like the confident soldiers on the recruitment posters that Adam had always privately thought he resembled and more like just another lost 18 year old school boy. There was something very wrong about that expression on Gansey’s face, but Adam didn’t want to voice any of the empty platitudes running through his mind. 

He settled for, “It’s looking good on our side.”

Ronan snorted. He turned around with a movement that made the entire frame rattle. The sleepy mumbles of the poor souls who had to sleep underneath and beside him echoed in the quiet room. “We should go visit Noah,” he said, his back still to them. 

“We should,” Gansey said. “Did Ross tell you when we were supposed to leave?” 

Adam shook his head. “He just said next week.” 

“I’ll send him a telegram tomorrow,” Gansey said. Then, “God, next week.” 

“How long is training in Britain?” Adam asked, swallowing down the unease in his throat. It felt strangely difficult to breathe, but whispering still seemed okay. 

Gansey didn’t say anything for a long time. Adam almost thought he’d fallen asleep, before he remembered that Gansey’s sleeping was more troubled and turbulent than even his.

Finally, he said, “I think—just a week, maybe more.” 

Adam sucked in a breath. 

He closed his eyes, the hard edge of the bunk pressing into his back. A week to wait until they left, another week with only a tentative  _ maybe more.  _ Then, war. 

He took deep breaths.  _7-cyl block, rotating crankshift, fires every other piston._

When Adam opened his eyes, his heartbeat had subsided to normal. Gansey still looked troubled, and Adam wondered if he pictured himself dying, ever, if he had imagined what it would feel like to take a bullet every time they went to the shooting range, or if he thought of what it might feel like to be caught in the blast of a bomb every time they were taught how to load one onto a plane. 

“At least,” Adam said, “we’ll never have to know what trench foot’s like.”

It must’ve been the right thing to say, awful and sarcastic as it was, because Gansey broke out into his relief tinged golden smile again. “You’re right,” he said. “I’m sure everything pales in comparison.” 

“We’ll see Noah in a bit,” Adam said, just at the same time as Ronan let out a long, exasperated sigh and called, “Go to sleep, you assholes.” 

Gansey laughed a small, quiet, breathless laugh. “Sorry,” he said. 

He turned over, pulling the rough army blanket over his shoulders. 

Adam did the same, wondered if the front would be colder, louder, filled with less people. Then, he went through his list of engine parts again, tried to picture how he would put them together himself, if given the chance, and fell asleep somewhere between the carburettor and oil pump.

 

* * *

 

The next day, Noah walked into the training camp still in his school uniform. Gansey was struck by how strange it already felt, standing in his army fatigues, when just a few months ago he’d be in the Aglionby blazer, just the same.

Now, he felt worlds apart. Noah looked bred for the kind of greatness his parents envisioned for him, floppy, curly hair spilling out over his forehead and an infectious grin. Someone who could inspire, or else invent, or else create. 

“Great Britain!” Noah was saying, bouncing slightly on his feet. “How exciting!”

“I’ll bring you back a German rifle,” Ronan said. 

Noah blanched. “ _ Rifle, _ ” he said emphatically, then shook his head. “I can’t believe you guys are going to the front.  _ Great Britain. _ ”

“Some days I can’t believe it either,” Adam muttered. 

“I’ll ask if I can visit, someday.” Noah’s eyes were bright. “I’ve always wanted to go overseas.” 

Gansey straightened, clapping Noah on the shoulder. “We’ll be sure to write,” he said, wondering if there would be anything left of the front to visit, once they got there. Great Britain for a week, then off into the skies. 

The sun suddenly felt very bright. The war had always felt far away, something pulling him towards making something of himself there, but in that moment, Gansey thought it was closer than ever. 

He was meant for this war, he knew it—he just had to find what it meant to make something of himself over there. 

“ _ You’ll  _ write,” Ronan was saying with a scoff. Adam elbowed him in the side. 

Noah bounced on the balls of his feet some more, craning his neck to see around the compound. “We all know Ronan’s illiterate already, so you should stop promising me letters and start showing me around this place.” 

Ronan laughed. 

They spent the rest of the day touring the training grounds, and Gansey shot a string of bullseyes into the target at the range. He sat in the fake cockpit, hands resting on the mounted gun, and imagined the wind ripping through. Destined for greatness. He was the best shot of all the trainees. 

 

* * *

 

The day before they left for Britain, Adam and Ronan went out alone into forest with a plane. Camp Henrietta had been carved out of trees, flat ground smoothing out the grounds near sweeping hills. Planes took off from the dusty airstrips, but Ronan’d found a clearing in the forest nearby. 

So they went.

He pretended he couldn’t feel Ronan’s gaze on his back as they walked, kicking up hay barrels for targets to shoot at. The same plane Adam’d been fixing back when Ross first sprung the news of them already waiting in the clearing, landed there just yesterday. 

_ One last flight,  _ Ronan had said, looking strangely light, softer around the edges than usual, and all of Adam’s resolve had crumpled. 

“Watch me,” Ronan said, as if that weren’t already a given. 

Adam leaned up against one of the trees on the edge of the clearing, hands gripping the rough bark. 

He felt like he spent all his life with his face stuck in the engine of some plane or another, fingers covered perpetually in grease and bits of grass. There was something about tweaking a gear here or tightening a bolt there and watching the plane lift off again that was exhilarating.

Sometimes, he sat back and watched the pilots fly after he'd fixed up their plane, watching the plane roar to life and then stream off until plane and pilot were only a harsh blot in the sky, trailing clouds and dust and, when they were far away from the front lines and everyone felt lighter, laughter.

His heart could quicken, safe as he was on the ground, and he'd watch the plane curving in the sky thinking,  _ I did this, I did this, I made this happen. _

So Adam understood when Ronan flew recklessly, knew that the same sharp exhilarating fuelled the stupid stunt tricks, the heart stopping near-miss dives and loop-de-loops.

Still, there was something bold and brash about how Ronan flew that was so unlike any other pilots Adam'd encountered. And he'd worked with quite a few. Ronan flew like he'd been at war with himself since the day he was born, and the Great War was only a way for him to feel on the outside what he'd always felt on the inside.

Adam squinted, flinching back as Ronan pelted the hay filled targets in the middle of the field with a storm of bullets. He kicked up dust in his wake, pulling out of the dive almost too late, then careening close enough to the treeline that Adam was halfway to crying out before he turned more sharply than should've been possible.

He jogged out to the field as Ronan landed just as roughly as he'd taken off, more cut grass in a jagged circle around him.

The dark blue raven painted on the side of Ronan's plane seemed to taunt him, as aggressive in its raised wings and screeching beak as the entire display had been. Ronan yanked his helmet off, tossing it back into the cockpit. Adam winced as it clanged.

"How was that?"

He was treated to a customary, savage, Ronan Lynch grin. "Perfect."

He found himself smiling thinly back. "I won't fix it up again next time."

Ronan snorted loudly.

"I won't."

"Sure you won’t," Ronan said, patting the plane's body with one arm. "I know you love Chainsaw as much as I do."

“You know you can’t bring it when we leave.”

“I’ll paint her on the side of the next one. Chainsaw Mark II.” 

“That’s not how planes work.” 

“Whatever.” 

Adam made a face. "You'd treat it better if you really loved it."

"You'll fix her next time I fuck up."

"God knows what you'd do without me."

Ronan shrugged. "Die in a blaze of glory, probably."

Adam didn't say anything to that. He wasn't sure what he could say.

Ronan flew like he was immortal. Sometimes, when Adam stopped lying to himself, he amended that to 'Ronan flew like he didn't care about his own mortality'.

 

* * *

 

The next morning, they were off to war. 


End file.
